shield
UK/ˈʃiːld/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
British/ˈʃɪj(ə)ld/
shield noun: a broad piece of defensive armor, held in hand, formerly in general use in war, for the protection of the body.
Noun
shield (plural shields)
- A broad piece of defensive armor, held in hand, formerly in general use in war, for the protection of the body.
- Knock go and come; God's vassals drop and die; And sword and shield, In bloody field, Doth win immortal fame.1599, William Shakespeare, Henry V, act III, scene II, line 8
- The shields used by our Norman ancestors were the triangular or heater shield, the target or buckler, the roundel or rondache, and the pavais, pavache, or tallevas.1786, Francis Grose, A Treatise on Ancient Armour and Weapons, page 22
- One who protects or defends.
- Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.1611, The Holy Bible, King James Version edition, Genesis 15:1
- Go muster men. My counsel is my shield; We must be brief when traitors brave the field.1592, William Shakespeare, Richard III, act 4, scene 3, line 56
- A featherless, flat, fleshy protuberance on the head; a frontal shield.
- A flattish patch of iridescent feathers.
- A heavily hardened, protective plate on an insect's exoskeleton that covers part of its body.
- In lichens, a hardened cup or disk surrounded by a rim and containing the fructification, or asci.
- A framework used to protect workmen in making an adit under ground, and capable of being pushed along as excavation progresses.
- The earth was excavated from the sunken cylinder; the shield was inserted into it, and the tunnelling began, the target being Wapping, on the opposite bank. The shield was an iron honeycomb containing thirty-six cells within which men dug the wall of mud before them.2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 88
- A field of energy that protects or defends.
- Kinetic barriers, colloquially called "shields", provide protection against most mass accelerator weapons. Whether on a starship or a soldier's suit of armor, the basic principle remains the same.
Kinetic barriers are repulsive mass effect fields projected from tiny emitters. These shields safely...2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Kinetic Barriers ("Shields") Codex entry
- Kinetic barriers, colloquially called "shields", provide protection against most mass accelerator weapons. Whether on a starship or a soldier's suit of armor, the basic principle remains the same.
- The escutcheon on which are placed the bearings in coats of arms.
- Meronyms: field, charge, emblem
- The second and third quarters of the shield are indecipherable on the stone but clearer in two other representations of the arms, a painted wooden funeral hatchment for Mary Davie[…]2012 October 8, Daniel W. Patterson, The True Image: Gravestone Art and the Culture of Scotch Irish Settlers in the Pennsylvania and Carolina Backcountry, UNC Press Books, →ISBN, page 141
- A toilet seat.
- A spot resembling, or having the form of a shield.
- Bespotted as with shields of red and black.1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
- A coin, the old French crown, or écu, having on one side the figure of a shield.
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- A sign or symbol, usually containing numbers and sometimes letters, identifying a highway route.
- A police badge.
- The chief put something in his hand and Bosch looked down to see the gold detective's shield.2005, Michael Connelly, The closers: a novel
- A large expanse of exposed stable Precambrian rock.
- A wide and relatively low-profiled volcano, usually composed entirely of lava flows.
- A place with a toilet seat: an outhouse; a lavatory.
- Parts at the front and back of a vehicle which are meant to absorb the impact of a collision
- A circuit board that can connect to an Arduino microcontroller and extend its capabilities.
- Arduino does many interesting things on its own, but it can't do everything. Fortunately, thanks to the open design of Arduino, building add-on boards to extend what Arduino can do is pretty easy. ¶ These boards are called "shields," because they usually fit over the top of Arduino like a...2012, Emily Gertz, Patrick Di Justo, “New Component: Ethernet Shield”, in Environmental Monitoring With Arduino, Sebastopol, C.A.: O'Reilly Media, Inc., →ISBN, page 45
Verb
shield (third-person singular simple present shields, present participle shielding, simple past and past participle shielded)
- To protect, to defend.
- Sunscreen shields against the harmful effects of solar rays.
- Shots rang out and a 15-year-old boy, shielding a woman from the line of fire, was killed.2004, Chris Wallace, “Character: Profiles in Presidential Courage”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name)
- To shelter; to protect oneself.
- The government has updated its guidance for people who are shielding taking into account that COVID-19 disease levels have decreased over the last few weeks.2020 May 31, “Guidance on shielding and protecting people who are clinically extremely vulnerable from COVID-19”, in GOV.UK
- To protect from the influence of.
Proper noun capitalized: Shield
Shield (plural Shields)
- A surname.
shield meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
shield in Hindi
- armor
- ढाल ḍhāl, कवच kavac, सिपर sipar
shield in Tamil
- armor
- கேடயம் kēṭayam
shield in Marathi
- armor
- ढाल ḍhāl
shield in Urdu
- armor
- ڈھال ḍhāl, سِپَر sipar, کَوَچ kavac
More languagesFewer languages
- shield in Bengali
- ঢাল ḍhal
- shield in Telugu
- డాలు ḍālu
- shield in Malayalam
- പരിച parica
- shield in Kannada
- ಗುರಾಣಿ gurāṇi, ಡಾಲು ḍālu
- shield in Punjabi
- ਢਾਲ ḍhāl
- shield in Odia
- ଢାଳ ḍhāḷa, ଫଳା phaḷā
- shield in Sanskrit
- कवच kavaca, ढाल ḍhāla
- shield in Sinhala
- පලිහ paliha
- shield in Assamese
- ঢাল dhal
- shield in Nepali
- कवच kavac
- shield in Pashto
- سپر spar, ډال ḍāl
- shield in Tagalog
- kalasag
- shield in Arabic
- وِقَايَه wiqāyah, وِقَاء wiqāʔ, مِجَنّ mijann, تُرْس turs
- shield in Malay
- perisai
- shield in Indonesian
- pelindung, tameng, perisai, melindungi
- shield in Persian
- سِپَر sipar
- shield in Thai
- โล่ lôo, เขน kěen
- shield in Vietnamese
- khiên, lá chắn
- shield in Myanmar
- ကာ ka
- Kashmiri
- سِپَر sipar
Examples of shield in a sentence
- My client welcomed the judge […] and they disappeared together into the Ethiopian card-room, which was filled with the assegais and exclamation point shields Mr.1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company...
- Beowulf, behind his shield, thrust forth only his right arm.1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 44:
Synonyms of shield
Forms of shield
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | shields |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | shields |
| present participle | shielding |
| past participle | shielded |
| past | shielded |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Shields |
| alternative form | Shiel |
Origin of shield
From Middle English scheld, shelde, from Old English scield (“shield”), from Proto-West Germanic *skeldu, from Proto-Germanic *skelduz (“shield”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kelH- (“cut, split”). Cognates Cognate with West Frisian skyld (“shield”), Bavarian Schuid (“shield”), Dutch schild (“shield”), German and Low German Schild (“shield”), Luxembourgish Schëld (“shield”), Yiddish שילד (shild, “shield”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk skjold (“shield”), Elfdalian stjöld (“shield”), Faroese skjøldur (“shield”), Gutnish skiåld (“shield”), Icelandic skjöldur (“shield”), Swedish sköld (“shield”), Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌹𐌻𐌳𐌿𐍃 (skildus, “shield”). Compare Breton skoed (“shield”), Irish sciath (“shield”), Scottish Gaelic sgiath (“shield”), Latin scūtum (“shield”), Latgalian škīda (“shield”), Lithuanian skydas (“shield”), Belarusian шчыт (ščyt, “shield”), Bulgarian, Russian, and Ukrainian щит (ščyt, “shield”), Czech and Slovak štít (“shield”), Macedonian штит (štit, “shield”), Polish szczyt (“shield”), Serbo-Croatian штит, štit, ščit (“shield”), Slovene ščit (“shield”), from Proto-Indo-European *skey- (“to dissect, split”).
An alteration of Middle English schilden after Etymology 1, from Old English sċildan, from Proto-West Germanic *skildijan, form Proto-Germanic *skildijaną.
Words formed from shield
- armshield
- bitch shield
- brown-point shield skin longirostris
- chin shield
- dayshield
- dress shield
- enshield
- eyeshield
- face shield
- faceshield
- finger shield
- forceshield
- Golden Shield
- gumshield
- gunshield
- headshield
- heat shield
- human shield
- ice and water shield
- kite shield
- lantern shield
- living shield
- lockshield
- meat shield
- medicine shield
- nipple shield
- ozone shield
- panty shield
- pop shield
- radial shield
- rape shield
- riot shield
- roundshield
- sap shield
- shieldable
- shield aralia
- shieldback
- shield-backed bug
- shield-bearer
- shield beetle
- shieldbill
- shield bug
- shielder
- shield fern
- shield law
- shieldless
- shieldlike
- shieldmaid
- shield-maiden
- shieldmaiden
- shieldmaker
- shieldman
- shield medick
- Shield of David
- Shield Row
- shield shrimp
- shield-skipper
- shieldsman
- shieldsmith
- shieldtail
Phrases with shield
Words that rhyme with shield
Questions about shield
- What does shield mean?
- Shield means a broad piece of defensive armor, held in hand, formerly in general use in war, for the protection of the body.
- What is shield in Hindi?
- Shield in Hindi is ढाल (ḍhāl), कवच (kavac), सिपर (sipar). See Shield meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use shield in a sentence?
- My client welcomed the judge […] and they disappeared together into the Ethiopian card-room, which was filled with the assegais and exclamation point shields Mr.
- What part of speech is shield?
- Shield can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce shield?
- Shield is pronounced /ˈʃiːld/ (UK).
- What is the plural of shield?
- The plural of shield is shields.
Words near shield in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: shield (page history and authors); Shield (page history and authors); ਢਾਲ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); ଢାଳ (Odia) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-shield.ogg.
Cite this entry: “shield.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shield. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.